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Search for Annual 14C Excursions in the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Fusa Miyake*
Affiliation:
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Kimiaki Masuda
Affiliation:
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Toshio Nakamura
Affiliation:
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Katsuhiko Kimura
Affiliation:
Fukushima University, Fukushima, Japan
Masataka Hakozaki
Affiliation:
National Museum of Japanese History, Tokyo, Japan
A J Timothy Jull
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Todd E Lange
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Richard Cruz
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Irina P Panyushkina
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Chris Baisan
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Matthew W Salzer
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: fmiyake@isee.nagoya-u.ac.jp.
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Abstract

Two radiocarbon excursions (AD 774–775 and AD 993–994) occurred due to an increase of incoming cosmic rays on a short timescale. The most plausible cause of these events is considered to be extreme solar proton events (SPE). It is possible that there are other annual 14C excursions in the past that have yet to be confirmed. In order to detect more of these events, we measured the 14C contents in bristlecone pine tree-ring samples during the periods when the rate of 14C increase in the IntCal data is large. We analyzed four periods every other year (2479–2455 BC, 4055–4031 BC, 4465–4441 BC, and 4689–4681 BC), and found no anomalous 14C excursions during these periods. This study confirms that it is important to do continuous measurements to find annual cosmic-ray events at other locations in the tree-ring record.

Information

Type
Rapid Event in the Natural Atmospheric 14C Content
Copyright
© 2016 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 
Figure 0

Figure 1 Carbon-14 content (Δ14C) for the last 12,000 yr (IntCa13: Reimer et al. 2013). The arrows show the periods when the increase rates of the Δ14C data are more than 0.3‰/yr. We analyzed the 4680, 4440, 4030, and 2455 BC time intervals in this paper.

Figure 1

Figure 2 Bristlecone pine samples for this study. These samples came from the White Mountains of California, USA (37.3794°N, 118.1654°W).

Figure 2

Figure 3 Comparison of measured results from this study (black circles), the original data of the IntCal13: QL: blue squares (Stuiver and Braziunas 1993), UB: orange triangles (Pearson et al. 1986), Hd: green diamonds (Kromer et al. 1986), SUREC: black star (Bronk Ramsey et al. 2012), Pta: blue stars (Vogel and van der Plicht 1993), and Oxa: red circles (Bronk Ramsey et al. 2012), and the IntCal13 data (gray line) (Reimer et al. 2013). Please see online version for color.

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